We know only “Change” is constant in life and everything
else can be obsolete with time . Certainly IT has a constant challenge/ impact in project
management too.
Mostly our customers don’t know what
they don’t know, and even they know they can’t articulate it properly so they
routinely ask for something more or different. Tough Our teams are comprised of
talented, creative people who often recognize opportunities for improvement of
either the project’s deliverables or the processes agreed to for producing
those deliverables MOST of the time delivers something which later on don’t
attract/interest customers.
There are the changes that are
driven by evolving business objectives, new constraints from regulations, the
marketplace, etc. With change impacting the project from all of these sources,
both on a requested and on a discovered basis, how can a project manager
possibly expect to control anything?
Our first challenge is to realize
that we cannot control change. We need to adjust our perspective. Our job is
not to control change, but rather to control the impact of change on the
project.
Such an adjustment in perspective
enables us to avoid the trap of beginning to see our stakeholders as
uncooperative villains who are deliberately trying to make our lives miserable.
Focusing on controlling the impact of changes on the project permits us to
approach each change as a problem to be solved, just like any other issue or
technical challenge.
How to cope us with change / sustain the impact of
change process / incorporate change ??
Whether we
manage our project formally or informally, how changes will be captured,
evaluated, prioritized, decided, executed, and communicated needs to be clearly
understood both within the team and among the remainder of the project’s
stakeholder population. Additionally, every change that is requested or
discovered after the fact needs to be recorded to create a history of the
migration of requirements, expectations, and commitments throughout the project
lifecycle. Such documentation can, and probably should be simple, but it
indisputably needs to be.
- KISS: Keep it
Short & sweet i.e. simple :
Since we
are focused on trying to control the impact of change on our project, we want
to encourage our stakeholders to request changes before they begin to affect
the project. To gain consistent cooperation requires that the process of
requesting or identifying change be easy to engage, understand, and follow
through. A documented process helps; a process that can be communicated and
understood from a diagram (flow chart, swim lane diagram, etc.) is even better.
- Let all people know about IT :
We must:
- Engage our key stakeholders in defining, or at least
influencing, the definition of the process.
- Recognize who the influence leaders are among our
stakeholders and engage them as champions for change control on the
project.
- Remember that people learn through repetition, which
means that we must systematically and regularly remind and reinforce our
document, simple process.
- Enforce SLOWLY , one after another, gradually but consistently.
If we
engage stakeholders in helping to define the change control process, and we
have them explicitly agree to comply with the process, then we will garner greater
cooperation with the process.
When we
make exceptions in the way we carry out our process, we open the door for our
stakeholders to manipulate and subvert the process. Allowing a stakeholder, say
the sponsor, to make changes without adhering to the defined process simply
tells others that the process isn’t really important and that exceptions are
possible.
If the
sponsor asks for change, then rather than requesting a change request form
(CR)- a potentially career-limiting move - we can put the request in writing,
ask the sponsor to confirm our interpretation of the request, and then execute
the evaluation and recommendation steps of our process as normal.
There is no “golden arrow” in
project management - especially in change control, but by remembering and
adhering to these basic rules, we can improve the quality of change control on
our projects.
Regards
Sajal
7411356308--bangalore
8798129721--kolkata
http://www.smilesentrust.com/products
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mAZYVaKWGI
